/2 2 Also: one virtue of the Epstein files is that they provide a lot of primary evidence: actual direct written communications between individuals and Epstein. People’s own emails — what they say in writing — are the opposite of smears or rumors. They are compelling evidence.

If you'd told me, a decade ago, that the rising concept of the 'influencer' would one day serve as a transmission belt for the elevation of subliterate clowns seeking to provoke pogroms in exchange for promotional deals with online betting companies, I'd probably have said, "That tracks."

The real problem of the ICE agents kidnapping, beating, shooting, blinding, and murdering people in the street is actually all the legal observers, says senior research fellow at The Heritage Foundation

/4. 5. The administration has not offered any corroboration in any form. In short, it would be foolish and irresponsible to accept or report the administration’s claim as true.

"Why The Long-Held Belief That Consulates Are Inviolable Is Actually More Complicated Than It Seems As An Originalist Matter," by Ilan Wurman (forthcoming).

Okay, so this is an authoritarian playbook trick, once the evidence is overwhelming say everyone needs to wait for the official investigation then either fix it or attack it when its completed. Same shit Russian pulled with MH17 and chemical attacks in Syria, very predictable.

Me: Implement this feature. Claude: Great work. This is a great feature. I did it so wonderfully. It's so much better with this feature, and it works 98% of the time which is just phenomenal. You deserve a raise. Me: It needs to work 100% of the time. Claude: [changes to another branch]

One of the best things I’ve read in a while:

The killing of Alex Pretti is a heartbreaking tragedy. It should also be a wake-up call to every American, regardless of party, that many of our core values as a nation are increasingly under assault.

Megan is just aware enough to be cringing this got published the day of a brutal public murder by Trumpists, but not aware enough to anticipate that was likely to happen.

I remember the Boston massacre differently

So. No particular order… Tell me again we’re still the dependable nation. He’s proving Carney’s point from that speech in Davos Convenient the markets are closed, no? The President of the United States is a chaos agent. Republicans in Congress endorse this with their silence.

"Musk and Trump chuds steal social security data to try and illegally modify elections" 14 stories "Sam Altman says hospitals are no longer needed because your phone can conduct open heart surgery" 3,217 stories

OTOH I have regularly used changes in technology to meaningfully increase profit margins (price stays same, expenses go down). Sometimes it’s a skill issue (not necessarily of the tech team); sometimes it’s a knowledge issue (same); etc

There's no better way to observe MLK Day than to go on the news and insist that the civil rights protesters objecting to police brutality are actually "paid agitators"

i think this MLK day the thing to focus on is the strategic focus and tactical brilliance of the civil rights movement and the way it was laser focused on a set of achievable goals

“I am in Birmingham because injustice is here…..Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.” - MLK, Letter from Birmingham Jail

Whoa whoa whoa buddy who is this Jesus Christ you’re expecting me to emulate and what exactly did you say happened to him.

/2 Anyway, America was never about everyone loving liberty; America was always about enough people loving liberty and being willing to defend it to keep down the people with totalitarian souls.

Sometimes they just tell us they are weaponizing the criminal justice system to push their political agenda.

To paraphrase David Sedaris, if you want people to be sad when you die, don’t be a fucking asshole to everyone when you’re alive.

I guess this is the inevitable byproduct of viewing posting as doing politics

this format is how 75% of Americans now get their news

Note that the fascist is not using the pepper spray for crowd control. He is entering a vehicle unimpeded to depart. He is simply using the pepper spray to physically punish an unarmed citizen he doesn't like.

it's incredible how if you put this entire dialog into the Left Behind series, it would basically work, but instead it's just IRL MN

/3 That process will make it easier for this to happen again. So: what to do? Someone who promoted and both-sidesed Nazis in 1946 would face economic and social annihilation outside of extremists circles. How can we inflict that annihilation on the vapid media of now?

Can confirm -- Gas Town absolutely makes it easier to run many agents at once.

Know I should ignore this bozo but his stuff is instructive. For TCW et al the move is always the same: ignore material reality & the world of politics/power to steer "debate" back to...debate: to a morally vacant middle where they pose as Serious Thought Thinkers surveying crazies on both sides

One of my personal criteria is the ability to process nuance. If no, block immediately and move on.

/8 A huge part of what makes it very hard to convict Jonathan Ross for murder was baked into America generations before Trump was President. That’s the primary factor that lets law enforcement kill with impunity, not Trump. Dick Wolf has killed more black men than Leopold II.

This was really one of the strangest moments I can remember in American culture, there was a 10 day window where this man was considered a saint, like post-9/11 culture but on 4x fast forward

Not sure how to summarize this one. Wrote about the podcaster-occupied government invading for content, how the algorithmic internet is governed by the logic of reaction videos, and how it has contributed to a very nihilistic illiterate politics and culture of performance for imagined audiences

this store is 18+ and they’re strict as hell about it. none of this has ever been about “protecting children,” it’s about trying to force trans people to disappear

We had a good run

/2 That’s because I think the choice between a mainstream vibe-collectivist (who only seems extreme through Overton Window abuse) and a cult of white nationalist nihilists is not a close call. Taking the least charitable view of Mamdani, we’ve lived with it plenty before, and he’s not a psychopath.

Why do I have to read an Irish paper for a feature about this?

all meaning has collapsed in our post-literate society and i wrote a bunch of useless, useless words about it. read it if you, like me, are one of a diminishing minority who still reads www.theverge.com/policy/84960...

An essential development over the past decade-plus is that the ignorant went from feeling chastened when their ignorance was revealed to banding together and deciding that, actually, they were right. They might disagree at times, but they agreed that ignorance itself was an indicator of trust.

I have a college friend (financially secure, law professor) who is so much more viscerally annoyed by stupid left-wing prattle than he has empathy for people generally. I hope he is an outlier.

I am never going to get over how >1.2 million Americans died of COVID, and the talking head consensus became "we should have done less mitigation."

Extremely funny to call the pope “holier-than-thou”

Well all the people who say “we need to hire the most qualified people” are getting a chance to run things and it turns out they aren’t qualified to shovel shit into a bucket.

As is the case with Musk, and even Trump, the most grotesque part is not their existence — awful people have always been around and always will be. The most grotesque part is nominally smart or honest or decent people taken in by them. Or, at least, pretending to be taken in, for advantage.

Weird how The Free Press was able to publish all of these without comment from the Washigton University Transgender Center at St. Louis Children's Hospital.

At CBS News, we must be able to have respectful disagreements about “the thorniest editorial matters.” Which is why I did not speak to the reporter whose story I spiked.